There was an ugly smack of intrigue in the air, puzzling to a plain soldier.

Nor did he like the look of the streets now dim in the twilight.

On his way to the gates they had been crammed like a barrel of salt fish, and in the throng there had been as many armed men as if an enemy made a leaguer beyond the walls.

There had been, too, a great number of sallow southern faces, as if the Queen-mother had moved bodily thither a city of her countrymen.

But now as the dark fell the streets were almost empty.